


cover up the blank spots

by vice_vereesa



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Female Character, Emotionally Repressed, F/F, Fix-It, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian Character, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:13:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25548016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vice_vereesa/pseuds/vice_vereesa
Summary: Lorraine saves Delphine and now she has to deal with this nagging feeling in the back of her mind that maybe some of these relationships are real, after all.OR: Lorraine slips in and out of Delphine's life post-Berlin until one day she forgets to leave.
Relationships: Lorraine Broughton/Delphine Lasalle
Comments: 76
Kudos: 214





	1. 1989

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BurgerBurgerBurger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurgerBurgerBurger/gifts).



> My good friend Burger requested an Atomic Blonde fix-it fic as part of a fic exchange we did and I'm so glad she did because I personally love un-killing female characters and putting them together with bisexual Charlize Theron.  
> I might bump the ratings later.
> 
> Title is from the song 'This Must Be the Place' by Talking Heads

“Check that envelope,” Delphine whispers and her voice is so low and hoarse that Lorraine thinks that something might’ve snapped in her throat, after all. “The one with your name on it.”

Delphine is lying on her back, propped up by pillows – some of them are slashed open and turned inside-out, duck feathers covering the floors around the bed like an explosion of volcanic ash, and she is melting some ice over her neck, red and already blooming with a bruise like a necklace Lorraine knows way too well. She might even sport one herself. She hasn’t checked yet.

Delphine looks shaken, Lorraine thinks, her eyes are blown wide open by leftover adrenaline, tar-black and glassy, she seems to be gazing at her or maybe beyond her or maybe her focus lies completely elsewhere because her fingers keep slipping over the cubes of ice. Several of them tumbled off the bed and rolled away, ending up in small puddles on the carpet and then seeping between the threads. 

Lorraine looks back at her; she has the envelope in her hands, her name on it spelt out in block letters, hurried and sharp and dynamic, the handwriting of someone who knows painfully well that they might be dead by the morning but something drives them forward anyway, a dogged sense of what? Duty? Vengeance? Sentimentality? Lorraine cannot say but she hopes whatever she finds in that envelope justifies the dead MI6 operative on Delphine’s floor, frozen in his blood, surrounded by the melting ice cubes.

David Percival had gone rogue. 

This, she had already known.

Delphine whispered her intel in her ear, so honest and so trusting – an act of suicide in this business that makes her wonder just how much self-preservation got stuck in the woman and how much of their few days together were about Delphine wanting to passionately speed off a cliff.

In any case, she didn’t hope to get photo evidence too, at least not this easily–

She shakes off that thought. This was not _easy_. Delphine almost died for it.

Even if that’s part of the job, it would’ve been a _shame_. 

Her thoughts sound flippant even to her.

She puts the pictures back in the envelope then the envelope in the inside pocket of her coat.

“How the fuck did you manage to snap these?” Lorraine says as she walks back to the bed, the heels of her stiletto only making a muffled thud of a sound as she steps over David. “I could spot you the moment I landed. Phonebooth?”

“Have you considered,” Delphine begins and then clears her throat, “that I wanted you to make me?”

“That’s very bold.” Lorraine takes off her coat and throws it at one of Delphine’s armchairs. She drops down next to her, inelegant and heavy with exhaustion and the weight of her brain running at a hundred miles an hour. “And _stupid_.”

“No, the stupid thing was baiting Percival,” Delphine says.

“That’s what you were doing here?” Lorraine can’t exile her incredulity from her tone – Delphine is such a _rookie_ , the worst kind too, the one who thinks they aren’t out of their depth, who would swim against a riptide and drown a few feet from the land because they can’t notice the glaringly obvious cues and signs that hit Lorraine like a semi.

“I don’t know,” Delphine admits. “I was trying to get extracted but things were moving too fast.”

“The DGSE is generally not very quick on the uptake,” Lorraine says.

“ _Oui_.” Delphine presses her fingers to her throat and sucks in a stiff breath. “My time was up. It was either him or me.”

“It would’ve been,” Lorraine says because it is true and the admonition and the worry remain unsaid. She wonders how her eyes look to Delphine now, if she still knows her tells with blood caked over her and a black eye she wouldn’t be able to cover with a tub of concealer.

“I know that.” Delphine drops her ice cube back in the bucket and sits up. Her gaze flutters about Lorraine’s face, taking in her cuts and bruises, only grown in size and number since their meeting earlier, and she reaches out a hand, shaking, and buries it in her bloodstained hair. Lorraine shivers. “I didn’t think you’d show up tonight. Maybe a few days later, I don’t know.”

“You’re welcome,” Lorraine croaks out and grabs her by the wrist. She cannot consolidate that casual, misplaced tenderness with how rough and raw she feels inside and most of that has nothing to do with the body on the floor. 

Delphine drops her hand.

Not _yet_.

Lorraine stares up at the ceiling and takes in all the weirdly shaped yellowish patches on it, evidence of a leaking pipe or a washing machine that got too enthusiastic and ripped itself out of the wall because the only other thing to stare at would be either Delphine’s face or David’s body. The former would invite a lot of questions for which she has no answer and the latter would force her to snap back to reality, come up with an action plan, tug at the numerous strands of influence she has spread out in Berlin, with soviets and germans at the ends, ready to be pulled in and used and discarded. 

She doesn’t know what she expected when she came here tonight.

Maybe an empty apartment and the promise that Delphine was already on a plane to Paris or a train to Strasbourg.

Maybe Percival ransacking the place, allowing her to tie up loose ends.

Truthfully, she wasn’t thinking _much_ , and that troubles her.

There was only a blind-hot surge behind her eyes, a pressure in her temples, dull at first and then suddenly piercing, that told her to go and she did. 

And when she found Delphine with a telephone cord wrapped around her neck and Percival attached to it, the veins and sinews in his hands popping as he pulled, both of their faces blotchy red – hers from asphyxiation, his from the strain, she put her newfound skill of not-thinking to display again and shot at him without hesitation, her bullet entering through his left eye socket and leaving through the back of his head, lodging itself in the wall. A shockingly clear shot that only sprayed a few droplets over Delphine’s cheeks.

It was the most amateurish of all moves and it makes her so goddamn _mad_. 

She has the photographs, she has the watch in her pocket, she has enough recordings of Percival to cut up and glue together a convincing tape, she has a perfectly built-up story for the MI6. She has no reason to be mad at herself except for that _fucking_ sentimentality that made her forego years of training like it was nothing. She took a single look at Delphine Lasalle with her eyes full of tears, bulging unnaturally, and she pulled the trigger, throwing everything to the riptide. 

She got lucky – Delphine proved to be useful again.

It was still a rookie mistake.

She rolls on her side and lands her gaze on Delphine and that move is a mistake too because she looks back at her with so much gratitude mixed with a tall glass of something else she cannot place and cannot name, that Lorraine feels herself drifting away in the wave of emotion rolling off her. 

“Thank you,” Delphine says belatedly and Lorraine can’t tell how long she had been transfixed by the ceiling. “For everything.”

“What do you mean?” Lorraine says. “Are you thanking me for the sex now?”

“Of course not,” Delphine says and she cracks a smile at her. She raises her hand yet again to hover it next to Lorraine but she doesn’t land the touch. “You should be thanking me for that.”

“I think it was a mutual effort,” Lorraine says and without giving it much of a thought, she lifts her head just enough to fit her jaw in Delphine’s palm. The pain of the touch comes with a sharp hiss and then it gets dulled by the warmth of Delphine’s skin singing her – the film stills, the frame melts.

 _Fucking sentimentality_.

Delphine cradles her face and says, entirely ignoring Lorraine’s quip, “Thank you for showing me that this is not my world.”

“You didn’t need me for that,” she notes. “You already knew that.” 

“Perhaps I did,” Delphine says, “But I was too– how do you say it? Cocksure?”–Lorraine nods–“Yes, a bit too cocksure, a bit too stubborn.”

“I guess getting choked out humbles you,” Lorraine says and turns her face towards her hand, kissing the inside of it, tracing her life line with her lips. The cut in the corner of her mouth splits and it stings more than it should be reasonable. _It is always the smallest cuts_ , Lorraine thinks and she grins into Delphine’s palm.

“I see my future in you,” Delphine says and Lorraine stiffens. Before she could consider the _implications_ , Delphine continues and crushes her expectations swiftly and expertly, “I either die or I end up like you. I don’t like those chances.”

“Smart,” Lorraine says and sits up. “I don’t like your chances either.”

Delphine leans over and kisses her forehead, right above her left eyebrow, the only place on her entire face that isn’t marred by a cut or a bruise or covered by a layer of dried blood, and Lorraine wonders why it still has to hurt.

~~~

And so it goes.

The next day the DGSE pulls through as if they were shaken from their daze by the Wall coming down and they get Delphine a plane ticket to Paris. Lorraine sees her off and she has to admit that it is a fairly clean affair – they wish each other the best and kiss farewell in the crowded terminal, ignoring the looks they get, and Delphine’s cheeks still fit in her palms like she was moulded in her hands and then cast to perfection. Their kiss is languid and honest and promises absolutely nothing. The gash on Lorraine’s lower lip splits again and so they split too.

Lorraine has no illusions, she knows it is going to show up in her record and she cares an absurdly little amount about that and that alone should worry her.

She expects to never hear from Delphine again, at least not in the framework of espionage, because she trusts her to be smart for once and get a cushy desk job at DGSE with good pay and good benefits and free weekends and no double-agents trying to crush her throat. She briefly toys with the idea of seeing her name in a decade between the nominees of a prestigious poetry award or headlining a festival in the States, and then she shots it all down because she has no time or mental space to think about her.

She needs to take care of the mess the MI6 whisked up around her, so she goes back to London and plays her part and sells her product and the brits eat it up. Kurzfeld knows her cues well enough to play off of her and it is a riot. Gray and C even give her the satisfaction of looking properly awkward about their oversight. They decide to save face so her file gets sunk to the bottom of a drawer somewhere and Lorraine Broughton gets to retire from service with a nice badge of honour. 

With that, she retires her alias too. Lorraine Broughton moves to the Lake District to live a life of peace and anonymity in a cottage south of Keswick, and she brings back “Loren Burrows”, which is still not her real name but close enough for comfort.

The last loose end to tie off is Bremovych. She knows the script already: he will greet her like an old friend, turn on that rusty and stilted Russian charm he has, get the watch, and then call in the firing squad to take care of her. He will be very civil, very much a gentleman. Almost likeable. He is ever-predictable to the very end and that’s his only redeeming quality.

She feels no remorse when he finally collapses with blood spurting from his neck. He is a relic, a sadistic remnant of a collapsing system, and while Lorraine has no pipe dreams about a capitalist tidal wave coming for East Berlin to wash out all the Russians and the Stasi, she also doesn’t want to give him a chance to swim or sink. She is the only one allowed to swim. That is _her_ game.

~~~

Kurzfeld gives her an eye-roll when she asks him to give her one more day in Paris to meet up with a contact back from Berlin to get additional intel on soviet operations.

It is almost ten o’clock at night, and they are sitting in a small and mostly empty restaurant that the owners kept open past closing hours on special request. Kurzfeld is sampling a plate of cheese with various breads and fruits, and he is reading yesterday’s New York Times. From their table by the window, Lorraine can see young men and women – university students, she assumes – ambling about on the street, going home or going to a party, she can’t tell, their inebriation is the only thing immediately obvious about them, their steps turning into a stagger as they hold onto each other.

“You always have to go and insult my intelligence, don’t you,” he says and folds the newspaper in half. The main page news is all about the Berlin Wall, as expected. “I know you want to meet Delphine Lasalle and I also know that she has absolutely nothing to give you that she hasn’t given already.”

When Lorraine says nothing and just downs her glass of Stoli, he sighs and adds, “You know what? I don’t want to know. You do whatever you want but if you are made or if there’s an information leak–”

“I won’t let myself be compromised, sir,” she says, and what she means is “I will not be caught alive, sir” and “I will take care of her, sir” and moves to stand up.

“Loren?” he calls after her. He rarely uses her first name and it almost makes her bristle. “What the hell is it about her?”

She cannot say. She doesn’t know.

She only knows the magnetism one would feel when they meet their negative – Delphine is a picture taken of Lorraine, never developed. 

The rest is to be uncovered if she dares put a scalpel to it.

“There are women in the States too,” he says eventually, after half a minute of silent deliberation, as if he had to chew his words first and digest them too, and then he throws his paper down on the table for emphasis. “If you want to go civil…”–he trails off and looks at her with raised eyebrows–“you can settle down. Discreetly.”

“I assume this conversation didn’t happen, sir.”

“You assume correctly.”

~~~

It takes Lorraine exactly ten minutes to get Delphine’s address from her contact which is alarming in itself but it comes handy now so she files that thought away for later.

She has a small flat up on Montmartre, on the fourth floor of an apartment building with huge windows, light and charming and bohemian, and Lorraine thinks that setting fits her so much better than the rental she had in Berlin above the night club even if that one had excellent mood lighting and an adequate bed before she got blood and grime all over it. It was still adequate even then, just not as inviting.

Lorraine slips into the building with three young women who smell like cheap wine and perhaps _grass_ but she can’t tell for sure, and they laugh all the way up to the top of the stairs, their ascension a feat in itself. She takes the elevator – it’s an old-school thing with iron door panels she has to close manually and with its chipped yellow painting and rust-eaten screws, the whole thing looks like it is ready to take her up to the fourth floor only to plunge her to her death before she could exit and say so much as “how have you been” to Delphine.

“How have you been” is not the first thing she says when Delphine opens her door, looking every bit as confused as Lorraine feels, her hair dishevelled either from sleep or–

Maybe Lorraine shouldn’t have come here unannounced. 

Maybe she shouldn’t have come here _at all._

Kurtzfeld is right, of course, there are women in the States, men too, people who know nothing of her baggage, who would take her at face value, Loren Burrows or Lorraine Barkley or _Loren Bernard_ , and there would be a well-constructed lie for every possible question they could ask, and if they got sceptical she would pull out a new identity and a new background and start anew somewhere else, have a fresh chance at a life of normalcy.

The idea makes her stomach flip but she can’t shake the feeling that he is _right_.

Delphine Lasalle is a risk to the Agency, a risk to Lorraine and, mostly, a risk to herself.

She has no business barging into Delphine’s life and pulling her back into her _bullshit_ –

Delphine grabs her by the lapels of her coat – a black wool trench – and she pulls her inside, her touch firm and unyielding, and Lorraine allows herself to be led. Delphine pushes the door closed behind her with her palm flattened against the white wood, her arm brushing against Lorraine’s face, and there’s a compulsion in her to lay a kiss in the crook of her elbow but she does nothing. 

“You made it.” Delphine whispers the words, and she sounds full of wonder and a laugh brimming under the surface. 

What a simple yet loaded sentence. It makes Lorraine’s mind speed up with possible interpretations.

You made it – you got out of Berlin.

You made it – you got out of the MI6.

You made it – you got out of your meeting with Bremovych and not even in a body bag.

_You made it – you are here._

“I was in the neighbourhood,” is what Lorraine says and as far as openings go, it is a terrible one. 

Delphine either doesn’t share her opinion or she has a fondness for her because she laughs at it, low and short as she always does, and it reverberates through the flat and comes back to them to end up as a twinkle in Delphine’s eyes, inquisitive and promising a depth of knowledge of a world Lorraine doesn’t know.

“I suppose I’ll have to relocate,” Delphine says. “Shame about the flat.”

Delphine is wearing a black déshabillé, thin enough to direct Lorraine’s gaze straight back to her face. 

She didn’t come here for sex. She didn’t _not_ come here for sex either but that is only fifth or sixth on her list of priorities, easily surpassed by such important and urgent topics of discussion as “how have you been” or “you left a roll of film in your Berlin apartment and it is full of nudes of us, do you want them back or was that a gift”.

Delphine slices her coat off of her with her palms, her fingers sliding across her dress no doubt searching for a wire and a tape and Lorraine understands that there’s nothing intimate about this, it is only part of the job, a simple pat-down, yet her throat is a dried-up wasteland and her jaw hurts from clenching it too hard and too long. Delphine finds nothing and she notes it with a grin, her teeth pearling white in the moonlight and that’s when Lorraine realises that they have been standing in the dark for minutes now without either of them making a move for the light switch.

“I already know you aren’t wearing a wire,” Lorraine says and Delphine’s smile just gets wider.

“Astute observation, Agent Broughton,” she says and hangs Lorraine’s coat on an ornate hanger with golden painting. “Pride and joy of the MI6, are you not?”

Delphine either knows or assumes or suspects and she is doing her own brand of baiting, feather-light and cheeky and Lorraine doesn’t grant her even a twitch of an eyebrow.

Instead, she uses that momentary lull to look around the flat. It is a small one-room apartment with a double bed taking up most of the living room, now unmade and crumpled, and the kitchen is equally small, only a fridge and an oven and a fireplace on top of it, and the decorations and the furniture itself all look quite eclectic as they are illuminated by the streetlights shimmering from below and the Moon from above. Definitely not a safe house. Or, perhaps, the French had different definitions.

“I’m a classic literature student,” Delphine explains as if she has been reading her mind. “For five whole days now. They don’t exactly know what to do with me.”

“I thought they’d give you an award for taking down Satchel,” Lorraine says and walks further into the apartment.

“Oh, but I didn’t do that,” Delphine says and she is doing that thing that makes Lorraine set her jaw and bite down on the inside of her mouth - she _insinuates_.

“What do you mean?” The words escape Lorraine before she could grab their ankles. _Rookie mistake._

“I meant,” Delphine begins and then pauses and Lorraine assumes it is for dramatic effect, “that I didn’t take down Satchel. You did.”

“Lorraine Broughton did,” Lorraine corrects her, “and she earned her retirement for it. She now lives in Cumbria.”

“Good for her. I might give her a visit someday,” Delphine says and takes her hand to lead her towards the bed. Their fingers entangle like stray strands of cord would in a sewing kit, faster than Lorraine realises. “Who are you, then?”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” Lorraine says and finally mirrors Delphine’s ever-present smile.

Delphine lies down on top of the bed and beckons Lorraine with a wave of her hand and she moves as though it is but a routine to her, like putting together a pistol or filling a tub with ice at the end of the day. In Berlin, they shared intel with Delphine splayed on top of her, her hipbones stabbing into her and her hair tickling her collarbones - she should’ve hated it but it was offset by the searing warmth of her skin and the softness of her muscles that were nothing like the taut wires that pulled Lorraine forward, always ready to snap.

“You know, this is hardly fair,” Delphine says when Lorraine climbs in next to her. “I told you my real name the first time we met.”

“Because you went to Berlin without an alias,” Lorraine points out. “Hardly a testament to your trust in me.”

“I know my strengths,” she says. “Lying isn’t one of them.”

Lorraine wants to scoff or laugh or make a barb but she can’t because Delphine is lying with her back to the windows and the moonlight puts a halo around her head, the stray strands of her hair glimmering white-grey, and words miss Lorraine.

“However, I am very good at calling out a liar,” Delphine adds.

“Thank God I’ve never lied to you,” Lorraine says, an attempt at a joke, a bad one again, and Delphine laughs. “I’d feel nervous now.”

“As if you could do that,” Delphine says and reaches over to put a loose strand of hair behind Lorraine’s ear and she does so with such practised ease that Lorraine thinks if she could form words now, she would tell her that this was her at her most unnerved since she stared down David Percival crouching over Delphine’s convulsing body. She screws her eyes shut and wills herself to replay that scene, projected onto the back of her eyelids, garish and crisp in its details – it is the reminder she desperately needs to anchor herself. It might be the only thing about her relationship with Delphine that comes anywhere close to her fucked-up definition of _normal_.

“I’ve been dying to ask you a question,” Delphine says, an echo from the past, and she plays it up on purpose. Her voice is laced with something light and bright that makes Lorraine open her eyes again.

“ _Delphine_ ,” Lorraine says and stops her with a finger to her lips.

“Are you not here for this?” Delphine takes Lorraine’s index finger between her teeth and bites down on it, so gently she can barely feel it, but she does, and her need surges through her like a bullet would, piercing and tearing through her and leaving a blossoming wound. “There is no shame in admitting that I’m the best lay you’ve ever had.”

“Overconfident,” Lorraine says as Delphine lays a kiss on her knuckles. “I could be here to take care of you.”

“Oh, I hope so.” Delphine takes Lorraine’s hand and puts it on her neck, over the jugular. Lorraine can feel a ripple in her muscles and her pulse speeding up under her touch.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Lorraine says.

“Take this as my testament, then.”

The questions sit on Lorraine’s tongue like embers, burning through her and she lets herself be swallowed up by their flames. Delphine Lasalle straddling her lap is a clean affair and if she sees anything in Lorraine’s eyes that betrays her truth, she is tactful enough to let it slide.


	2. 1990

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Earth below us  
> Drifting, falling  
> Floating, weightless  
> Calling, calling home"  
> \-- Major Tom - Coming Home by Peter Schilling
> 
> OR: Lorraine is in love and falling from the top of a building would be safer than this delirium.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Thank you for the lovely comments, I'm happy you guys enjoy this fic :)  
> Obviously, I have had very little time to write anything so I wrote this in tiny, tiny increments.  
> I might bump the chapters from 3 to 4. This is M rated rather than E but that's changing soonish. Next chapter soonish.
> 
> Obligatory disclaimer: I wrote the Minsk part before the """elections""" in Belarus so it wasn't inspired by that but I didn't want to change it. I saw that I posted the first chapter on July 27th and that date (1990) is super relevant in the history of the country, so that happened.  
> Obligatory disclaimer no. 2.: go to Cagliari, go to Ajaccio, go to Bonifacio if you can, post-COVID, they are super cool places and definitely not each other's suburbs. That was a bad joke.  
> Obligatory disclaimer no. 3.: Sofia Boutella was 34 when AB was filmed, Charlize Theron was 41 or 42 or something like that. Took some liberty.

_July 1990_

  
  


Lorraine hasn’t shown up in eight months and a couple of days. 

She doesn’t exactly keep track, she doesn’t cross out the days on her calendar and when she lies awake in her bed at one in the morning when there’s still techno pouring through her windows from the nightclub two streets down from her flat, muted enough that only the beat comes through, a dull throb in her ears and around her throat, she is not wondering about where she is, how she is, or if there still _is_ a Lorraine Broughton. 

The last one is a lie.

She laughs at herself then, at the absurdity of her life, at being so affected by someone she slept with a total of three times over a span of two weeks – no attachments, no promises, and her voice bounces off the walls and meets her again, bringing a discordant melody.

Nevertheless, Delphine plays a game much longer than eight months and a couple of days.

She can wait – so, she waits.

For her orders. For Lorraine.

An extended vacation, that’s what they called it and they set her up with a new identity – Delphine Bensaïd, a twenty-nine-year-old legal assistant at a local law firm, which is about as thrilling as she thought it would be, most of her days revolving around writing contracts and engaging in small talk with the secretary in the kitchen over cups of nearly inedible office coffee, gossiping about clients she doesn’t care for and faking an interest in men she doesn’t notice. She can’t wait to tell Lorraine that she actually does have a degree in law, earned and not fabricated. Delphine thinks she would find that amusing, which is to say, she would perhaps lift a single eyebrow at her and say nothing at all.

 _Delphine Bensaïd_.

She took her mother’s surname but she wouldn’t part with “Delphine” no matter how strongly they suggested it. 

The memory of Lorraine saying it, sighing it, moaning it into her mouth makes her shiver still, even in twenty-eight degrees at night and not a single lonely rain cloud to offer respite. 

It makes her want to find that respite in herself – her hands are Lorraine’s hands, her voice is Lorraine’s voice, and it’s a far cry from the real thing but it works.

“Delphine” has to stay.

A police siren blasts through her room and someone cuts the music.

She is left with ringing pressure against her eardrums, a gentle spasm in her flexed thighs, and the echo of Lorraine saying her name like a confession, like an admittance of defeat, of weakness, and she drags her fingers over her chest to sign off a strange and lacklustre cross.

~~~

Her job in Sardinia ran smoother than she expected – it was always supposed to be a simple extraction mission but one can never know with the mafia, so she made preparations accordingly.

She rewrote her will – a short and impersonal stock of her sparse valuables, then she rewrote her other, non-public will too – a longer and almost sentimental one, and she gave both of them to Kurzfeld with the explicit instruction to not open them unless she really was indubitably dead.

“Are you going to fake your own death?” was the only thing he asked as he pocketed the envelopes.

“Not this time,” was the only thing she said as she boarded her plane to Cagliari.

Now that her assignment, a nervous-looking accountant who knows way too much about international money laundering, is on his way to Marseille on a private jet, and she is left standing on the landing strip, the heels of her stilettos pressing dents in the scorching hot asphalt, she can already feel an itch under her skin that urges her to spit on caution and step on rationality and go forward, run on autopilot, give in to the pull of the riptide. Too much time to do too little and the vacancy in her schedule gets to be filled by _fucking sentimentality._

She has to be in Minsk in three days. Change has been simmering under Gorbachev’s perestroika and it seems like it’s almost ready to boil over and it makes Kurzfeld anxious for their Byelorussian agents, an understandable sentiment but Lorraine isn’t taken with it. While she understands the urgency, she is glad they both know the value of timing and preparation – she went to Berlin near-blind, even with her sources on both sides, and it almost cost her everything. Now, she thinks she has even more to lose and even less to gain.

Three days give her plenty of downtime, and while fifteen years of experience tells her to lay low and rest up, she can’t ignore the hair on her arms standing at attention or her skin blooming in goosebumps or the cotton-ball dryness of her mouth at the prospect of crossing that less than two hundred and fifty miles of distance that separates them and asking _her_ how she has been.

She tells Kurzfeld that she wants to see Napoleon’s ancestral home and he only sighs into the phone, weary and exasperated, but foregoes a comment besides a brief acknowledgement of her plans. Not exactly an agreement or permission, only a hum that tells Lorraine that he is tired of pulling on her leash. 

The leash loosens and so she goes.

~~~

She persuades a rich idiot called Paolo in Santa Teresa Gallura, who has made it a habit to catcall women on the pier including Lorraine, to take her across the Strait of Bonifacio with his yacht and, maybe, if he has the time, straight to Ajaccio. 

He has all the time in the world for her. He is pliant and eager and asks no inconvenient questions because he wants to sleep with her – no, he wants to _fuck_ her, own her for ten minutes or so, and she presents that possibility as only an arm’s reach away and not a completely hopeless venture on his part. Her face betrays none of the disgust that settles deep in her stomach and then rises and keeps rising, and as the yacht slices through the crowns of the waves, its body bobbing up-and-down, she writes it all off as seasickness.

After Paolo and his yacht collapse into a single dark spot against the sun and sink under the curve of the horizon, finally convinced that his best interest is to leave unfulfilled than never leave at all, Lorraine sorts through her remaining associates in Corsica, for once wishing she still had access to the web of influence she used to have as Satchel. She isn’t swimming in a pool of alternatives anymore. Her contact, a DGSE agent who hates his job enough to risk losing it, has a bottomless wallet and a good sense for discretion, and he tells her to hit up the Bibliothèque – a dance club down by the docks popular with tourists – to catch Delphine alone, strictly on Friday or Saturday and strictly before three in the morning. 

The thought of Delphine at the club makes her grin, thin and tight and nervous. The Bibliothèque seems like her territory, it is spacious but filled to the lid with people and the music is so loud it sits like a solid weight on Lorraine’s shoulders. It is fit for a could-have-been-rockstar and a never-poet like Delphine, and she can imagine the masses undulating around her to the rhythm – wherever she stands, she is the vortex at the centre of everything, pulling in attention from all directions.

Lorraine is ready to be dragged under the surface and drown. She won’t even fight it.

She feels like she is yanked forward by an invisible string attached to her sternum as she snakes through the crowd, bodies bumping into her as the tempo of the song changes to something fast and brutal, the punching beat reminding her of shooting an automatic, and her pulse starts to match the speed too. 

A young, half-naked man dripping sweat and glitter, high on something Lorraine doesn’t want to meet again in her own drink, clasps her hands and twirls her around in an attempt to dance with her and it takes all her willpower to not suplex him on instinct. He leaves as fast as he came, blurring away, leaving Lorraine disoriented and uncomfortable, like she is the only person who doesn’t get the punchline at the end of a joke.

The strobe lights on the ceiling are flashing blue and purple and red, and as she holds her hands up and waves her fingers, she sees everything in slow motion and out of synch.

Every other beat is total darkness. 

Until it isn’t.

Until it’s filled with the static spark of a touch on her jaw, the electricity jumping to her neck and then to her shoulders, and Lorraine _knows_.

She can only take in Delphine’s face for a few broken beats, blue and purple and red dancing in her eyes and yet – she is a _constant_ , a still frame burning imaginary colours into the back of Lorraine’s brain. 

Then Delphine pulls her into a hug.

The dark comes again but there’s nothing absolute about it; this time it’s saturated by the heat of a cheek against her cheek, fingers tangled in her hair and tugging slightly, not sharp enough to hurt but enough to ground and anchor her into the moment. Reality barrels into her like Lorraine is waking from a fever dream and she feels sharp and bold and solid again.

“You made it,” Delphine whispers into her ear and she shudders into the embrace – it is an automatic reaction and it almost makes bile rise in her throat but she shrugs off her discomfort and sinks further into Delphine, her frame enveloping her like a bespoke suit and that’s how she feels too. A perfect fit. “You made me wait a while.”

The word “presumptuous” dances on her tongue but she sucks it back in and says, “How did you know?”

“Your contact is my contact,” Delphine says as she detaches herself from Lorraine. Her voice cuts through the noise so brightly that everything else seems like elevator music. “Ever since Paris, I make it my business to know who asks about me. I don’t want to lose my flat again.”

“So much for going civil,” Lorraine says and she allows herself to be led again, by the hand, towards the bar.

“I shouldn’t have to be the one to tell you,” Delphine shouts through the crowd, “that our kind never goes civil.”

“You are ruining my dreams, Delphine,” Lorraine says and turns to the bartender to shoot off her order in quick french. “ _Stoli on ice, thank you._ ”

“ _We only have Smirnoff_ ,” he says and he doesn’t look an ounce apologetic as he wipes off the bar with a rug and then proceeds to mix a martini with practised ease.

 _“Of course you do,”_ Lorraine murmurs and nods at him. _“Make it double.”_

“I thought dreaming was for lost causes like me,” Delphine says and drops herself on one of the high stools, taking the glass of martini from the bartender with a shallow smile. “You have an exit plan?”

“I have an understanding with my handler,” Lorraine says and she only hopes it isn’t a lie. The words spill out of her like she is a cracked barrel that held in too much too long, until the wood rotted away and the hoops rusted to metal dust. “I’ll be a _contractor_ only until things calm down in the Eastern Bloc.”

“A contractor for the _Company_ ,” Delphine says and the lilt of her voice mocks Lorraine so easily, so kindly, she thinks it should be illegal to cut through her like that, like her carefully constructed persona is paper-thin and transparent. Delphine leans closer and adds, “I know you are CIA, Lorraine.”

Lorraine takes her glass of Smirnoff and downs it and tries not to let it linger on her tongue – it is smooth and bland and while most people would argue that every vodka is essentially tasteless, Lorraine knows better and she isn’t appreciative. She needs the clarity only Stoli scorching down her throat and a bath of ice can give her.

“I don’t believe it’s common knowledge. I certainly don’t run around announcing it to _my_ handlers,” Delphine says when Lorraine remains mum, rolling a shard of ice around in her mouth, revelling in the shocking numbness of her lips and the pain in her canines. “If you are worried about that.”

“I’m not,” Lorraine says and after two flashes of the stroboscope, she adds, “Worried.”

Delphine reaches over to fish a cube of ice out of Lorraine’s glass and their hands meet. An odd flare of an intangible emotion enters Delphine through her void-black eyes like an electric current and it must leave her at the tip of her fingers because they twitch and flex, a leftover shock coursing through her. Just like that, the image crashes through Lorraine: Delphine with the cord around her neck, clawing at Percival’s hands, leaving angry red scratches on his forearms, her fingers trembling like the branches of a tree in a windstorm, and Lorraine knows she looks at her like she has just witnessed a wonder.

Delphine laughs, low, and taps the cube against her lips and then slides it over her clavicles, lets it melt and drip over her top and down the hollow of her neck, lines of droplets racing down her skin, and then she has the audacity to give it a kiss before she drops it back in the glass. Lorraine wants to roll her eyes but she can’t.

“I'd rather you tried to seduce me in private,” Lorraine says and picks the green olive out of Delphine’s glass and pops it in her mouth. “When I can do a thing about it.”

Delphine squints at her with her eyebrows drawn close, nose scrunched up, full of humour and a protest clearly dying in her throat and Lorraine starts to wonder if she has made a mistake yet again, making decisions on a whim, following a fancy, allowing herself to dream of paths untrodden like a lost cause would.

“Presumptuous,” she says and Lorraine stifles a grin but it slips through her grasp despite her efforts and flowers for Delphine.

“Confident,” Lorraine corrects her gently. “I had some business in Cagliari.”

Delphine doesn’t comment on the abrupt change of topics and only says, “Cagliari, of course. Essentially the outskirts of Ajaccio. A stone’s throw away.”

“You could say I was in the neighbourhood,” Lorraine says. “Took a look at Casa Buonaparte.”

“I heard it’s quite atmospheric at two in the morning,” Delphine says and takes her time to consider Lorraine – she can feel her gaze glide over her cheekbones, her jawline, the length of her nose, her path leaves a line of burns on her skin, and the walls of Bibliothèque close in on Lorraine, the hot air and the humidity pressing her closer to Delphine. 

Wordlessly, Delphine rummages through her purse and then passes on her passport to Lorraine who takes it and flips through the pages with her thumb. It snaps open right at her picture – it is a flattering one, Lorraine can tell even in the low light. Delphine’s smile looks unforced, her hair is up in a neat bun, and her eyes are endless black pools with gravity strong enough to pull Lorraine in, and there’s nothing else to do than let it all happen.

“Enchanté, Mademoiselle Broughton.” Delphine extends her hand and Lorraine shakes it with as much drama as she can muster, then pulls her close enough that they are but a breath away. “Delphine Bensaïd.”

Something breaks in her, perhaps her resolve, perhaps her brain cells have dissolved in the Smirnoff, and her nerves light up like a glow stick snapped, as she whispers between her teeth, her lips unmoving, “I want to tell you my name too.”

Delphine shakes out a sigh and says, “I’d rather you tried to seduce me in private.”

“Is this your real age?” Lorraine says, sweeping her fingers over the numbers of her date of birth. _November 24th, 1960._ Delphine rewards her inelegant diversion with a quirked eyebrow and then she straightens up and away from Lorraine to sip her martini.

“More or less,” Delphine says. “You thought me older?”

“Younger.”

“Funny, I’m already thirty.” She slides the back of her hand along Lorraine’s forearm, slowly and deliberately, and Lorraine knows she is looking for a reaction: a flicker of her eyes or a twitch of her mouth, so she gives her nothing. Delphine is more generous and she gives her a smile as she takes her documents back. She adds, “I’m a June child.”

“Happy birthday.” She bares her thinnest grin at the inaneness of the statement and Delphine must disagree because the corners of her mouth tighten and pull her lips into an honest smile.

“Thank you,” Delphine says simply. “What about you? Are you some cradle robber? Am _I?”_

“I’m thirty-seven,” Lorraine says and it is the truth. She knows Delphine can tell it too. “Thought me older?”

“I did,” Delphine admits and passes her empty glass to the bartender with a nod and a wink. “You have over a decade of history with the MI6. I assumed you were at least forty, forty-five.”

“I just look like shit,” Lorraine says and it is mostly a joke, or at least, she wants Delphine to laugh at it. She is a vain woman, particular about her style, taking pride in looking impeccable when the job allows it but she knows the permanent dark bags under her eyes and the bruises and the cuts and the occasional bullet wound are wearing her down, eroding her body bit by bit, and there’s only so much she can patch up with makeup before she crumbles apart.

“You look fine to me after a few martinis. I like the new ‘do,” Delphine says and she tugs at a strand of her hair, now grown out and honey blonde, and Lorraine is inclined to believe her. “But you could use a little more sleep and a little less stress. They say it’s a killer.”

Lorraine doesn’t stop to think at all when she says, “Are you offering a good night’s sleep?” 

“Don’t insult me,” Delphine quips. “But I have a great double bed with a view of the harbour and some background music you can enjoy nonstop.”

“I’m sure it’s better than whatever acid trip they play here.”

“Oh, it’s so much worse.”

~~~

Delphine didn’t lie about the view.

Her balcony overlooks the port of Ajaccio, the sailboats and the yachts are drunken stars against the black of the sea, their lights trembling as the waves rock their hulls gently. 

She didn’t lie about the noise either: horns mixed with a low beat and the sound of someone dropping a bottle of beer or wine in the alleyway below them.

“I did what you told me to do,” Delphine says and she pulls a box of matches out of the inside pocket of the thin leather jacket she threw on after they left the club. She lights a match and Lorraine cups her palms around it – the breeze from the sea is unrelenting and the flame dances about the end of her cigarette with some reluctance before the tobacco finally glows orange in the night. “I gave them your intel on Bremovych and they let it all slide. Let _you_ slide.”

“They are very lenient with you,” Lorraine says and leans down to touch her cigarette to Delphine’s, the fire spreads without vacillation this time, and then she puffs out a ring of white-hot smoke that rises for a few seconds before it vanishes into the wind.

Delphine hums around her cigarette, noncommittal, and says, “Or they are waiting for me to make contact with you again.”

“Are they that interested in me?”

“Oh, _very_ ,” Delphine says. “An MI6 agent spilling secrets to the DGSE? They are having a field day with it. Never underestimate our hatred for the brits.”

“I’ve seen the agent they assigned to you,” Lorraine says. “He looks new.”

And he did, he was stiff and obvious, a beanstalk of a man in his late twenties, or so Lorraine guessed when she passed Delphine’s block earlier that night, mingled together with a group of Italian tourists, loudly declaring their love for the island, for the city, for women and for wine, in no particular order, and when one of the women stopped by the alcove where he was standing and threw up masterfully over the cobblestone, he rushed over to help her up without a beat of hesitation. It gave Lorraine enough time to break off from the group and loop around the building. He was none the wiser.

“Someone wants to make your work easy,” Delphine says. “Either that or I’m paranoid.”

“I can work with that,” Lorraine says and Delphine laughs.

“Me too,” she says. “Vincent is very easy to lose and I like that about him.”

“You know his name.” 

“You can get away with a lot if your keeper likes you,” Delphine says and presses her cigarette into the glass ashtray in her hand. She holds it up for Lorraine and she mirrors her motions.

“Don’t tell me you–” Lorraine bites down on her tongue, hard. She doesn’t finish that sentence. She started it before she knew the ending and now every variation sounds _awful_ in her head.

Delphine purses her lips at that and then she opens the balcony door and walks back into her apartment, holding her arms out for Lorraine and waving her fingers to beckon her. 

Lorraine refuses the call.

“Do you date men?” Delphine says as she peels her jacket off and hangs it up.

“I don’t date anyone,” Lorraine says and it is a truth, again.

“But you sleep with them.” Delphine takes off her shoes too and throws them in the general direction of the front door. Lorraine watches her from the balcony, petrified by the bombardment of thoughts and doubts against her unguarded mind, oscillating between Berlin, Percival, Paris, like the lights of the boats in the harbour, backwards and forward, left to right, never still, like Paolo’s yacht speeding against the wind across the strait, the smell of his sweat and desperation overpowering the salt of the sea. She feels nauseous.

“Not lately,” she says, “but I have.”

“Then you know how they can be stupidly romantic,” Delphine says and stops undressing to look back up at Lorraine, “emphasis on ‘stupid’.”

“You made contact with him.”

“Not how you think,” Delphine says and fingers the hem of her top, rolling it up with maddening speed, and Lorraine wants to tell her to get it over but the words die in her throat like the last embers of the cigarettes in the ashtray. “But I’ve made sure he knows how much I appreciate him _protecting_ me.”

“He’s in love with you?” Lorraine asks and she doesn’t know when Vincent ends and where she begins. She doesn’t know if Delphine’s aware of the murkiness of their conversation and she doesn’t know if she’s the only one thinking in parallels, in _delusions_ , and all this unknowing makes her feel aggravatingly lonely. Her nausea gives the stage up to something she hasn’t experienced in two decades, something eerily reminiscent of jealousy.

“He fashions himself after a medieval knight, pining after me from afar”–Delphine’s top finds its place on her bed–“who am I to ruin his fun?”

“Will he let this slide?” Lorraine snaps out of it and pushes herself forward into the room, stepping over the July and June edition of Vogue Paris with Tatjana Patitz and Elaine Irwin staring at her like two twins straight from the French Riviera, tanned and accented in gold. “Will he let _me_ slide?”

“He is still in that purple cloud of infatuation where he thinks he wants me to be happy,” Delphine supplies and when Lorraine circles a hand around her chest to unhook her bra, she shrugs it off and lets it fall around her feet. “Even if he can’t make me happy.”

“Do I make you happy?” Lorraine says and closes her eyes the moment the words leave her because she doesn’t want to see Delphine’s reaction. She doesn’t want the arched eyebrow, the pursed lip, the twinkle in her eyes, the tilt of her head, the clenching of her jaw, she doesn’t want any outcome other than an unequivocal yes. 

She is delirious.

“What do you think?” Delphine says quietly and moves to undo Lorraine’s shirt, her unsteady fingers struggling to slip the mother of pearl buttons through the holes.

“ _Bernard_ ,” Lorraine sighs out. “Loren Bernard is my real name.”

“Then you already know the answer,” Delphine says and stands on her tiptoes to kiss her.


	3. It never ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Funny how I find myself in love with you  
> If I could buy my reasoning I'd pay to lose  
> One half won't do  
> I've asked myself, how much do you  
> Commit yourself"  
> \-- It's My Life - Talk Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This is a half-chapter, a bridge, basically a tie-in to the last chapter. Direct continuation, Delphine POV because I wanted to explore something a little different.  
> I don't think this is particularly explicit but just in case, I bumped the rating.  
> I hope you enjoy it!

_July 1990_

_Loren Bernard._

The name dances around in her thoughts to a fast and punishing beat, and it takes her on a swift trip amongst her half-formed theories about Lorraine’s upbringing and nationality and the origin of her accent – Belgian? Dutch? South African? She doesn’t know but she can hear a subtle hue to her tone. These are the things she wants to ask but knows she shouldn’t, and then it all gets overshadowed by a single idea so prominent she can’t ignore it, taking a front-row seat in her mind.

She wants to make Lorraine happy too.

It is but a vague notion yet to mean anything tangible to her and she suspects if she asked Lorraine about it she would blank too. Whenever she stares into Lorraine’s eyes, as far into her soul as she is allowed to look, she sees a terrifying and heartbreaking possibility that she doesn’t know happiness beyond a good drink or an expensive dress or the hard-fought satisfaction of a job well done, and then Delphine has to grapple with a rare sense of doubt and insignificance she doesn’t handle well at all. That doubt would eat away at her if she let it.

So she closes her eyes and she doesn’t dare look and she lets none of these thoughts surface and float around, turning into a frown or an upturned lip or the _tremor_ in her fingers she hasn’t been able to shake off since Berlin.

She tastes Lorraine’s restraint in their closed-mouth kiss, barely-there and tremulous, and she hopes their lips catching on each other, her fumbling with the buttons and Lorraine’s fingers sinking into her bare hips are all versions of happiness. 

She pours herself into their kiss – the depth of her own feelings has never scared her, she is liquid copper now, heated to the point where she is losing integrity and she can take any form, fit any shape, ignite any ground beneath her before she cools down. 

Lorraine’s white shirt hits the floor and Delphine can’t remember who finished unbuttoning it but her money isn’t on herself. She breaks away for a moment, puts a few inches between their faces to look at Lorraine – her eyes are glazed over, her pupils are blown so wide it reminds her of a lunar eclipse and the skin of her chest is flushed a soft red. She looks so ready and so alert and so _alive_. 

“Do you want me, _Loren_?” Delphine whispers and as she trails her hands down Lorraine’s neck, she can feel her pulse jump under her palm.

“I thought we were beyond that,” Lorraine says and it is beautifully ambiguous and it promises a lot while saying nothing. Delphine wants to kiss her just for that.

“I don’t mean sex”–Delphine steps backward and when the back of her knees hit the edge of her bed, she lets herself fall–“and I don’t mean _fucking_.”

Lorraine seems to be taking her time – teasing or torturing or hesitating because she doesn’t join her, she stays standing in the shaking backlight of the harbour, her face shaded over and unreadable.

“What do you mean then?” 

“Everything,” Delphine says and it is the greatest gamble she has ever pulled. 

Lorraine’s feelings live under a heavy veil and while Delphine knows her perception and intuition are at least _somewhat_ right, between that and the absolute truth lie infinite grey areas – some only mildly embarrassing, others purely devastating. Nevertheless, she must know. She prides herself on her patience but there’s only so many “fuck and bails” she can take before her heart implodes.

“ _Everything_ ,” Lorraine sighs out then and bolts into motion. “My handler thinks I’m insane.”

“Emmett Kurzfeld?” Delphine says, following along the digression, trying to curb her visceral reaction to that singular word: the breath that catches in her windpipe and comes out as a hiss, her hands twitching and grabbing at the thin sheets, gathering them into her fists. 

Lorraine crawls onto the bed and above her and Delphine reaches up to fan her fingers out on her stomach. Lorraine’s muscles tense, a ripple runs through them as she says, “You did your homework.”

“I can be very thorough,” Delphine says and draws a circle around Lorraine’s navel with the tip of her index finger, “when I like the subject.”

Lorraine looks like she wants to smile but the quirk of her lips never comes. Or perhaps it does but Delphine can’t see it because Lorraine drops herself on her elbows and buries her face in her neck where it meets her shoulder, and just stays there, inhaling her. Delphine’s hands find their way into her hair on their own volition, they thread through her strands from the crown of her head to her nape.

“Is this insanity?” Lorraine murmurs. Delphine can’t make out the words but she feels the vibrations in her throat.

“For us?” Delphine’s hand stops and she sighs. “Definitely.”

Lorraine says nothing but she presses a kiss to her collarbone and the vulnerability pouring out of her makes Delphine’s eyes swim, and as she glances over to the balcony, the city lights look twisted and elongated like molten glass straight out of a furnace.

“I’m fine with that,” she whispers because there’s a need in her to clarify, to say it with words too, undeniable and true. “It makes me happy. _You_ make me happy.”

“Why?” Lorraine moves up then, biting her neck gently as she goes, a row of kisses, until she reaches the underside of her jaw, and Delphine can’t suck her sigh back in, it bursts out of her like Champagne popped open and she has to clasp a palm over her mouth before her inevitable moan could slip out.

There’s an urge to downplay the question or to take away its edge with a joke but Delphine can’t find her sense of humour for once, so she says, “Why do you think I chose this career?”

Lorraine pushes herself up to look at Delphine. She says, “Do you want to know what your CIA profile says?”

“I’m sure it’s very flattering,” Delphine says and slides her hand down to Lorraine’s cheek. It is still a good fit. “ _Delphine Lasalle 101_.”

“Affluent background, white-collar parents, French father and Algerian mother,” Lorraine says and emphasises every comma with a brush of a kiss to Delphine’s knuckles, an oddly affectionate gesture. With each touch, Delphine’s doubt withers. “Went to a private school where she maintained a perfect average aside from attendance and behavioural issues.”

“Oh, what’s next?” Delphine says with a low laugh. “I became a spy to vex dear old maman and papa? An act of rebellion?”

“Did you not?” Lorraine says and then bites down on her ring finger.

“ _Foutaise!_ ” Delphine’s quips. “Give me some credit.”

Moments like these make Delphine long for a chance to read Lorraine’s mind – her gaze flutters about Delphine’s neck and her shoulder and, finally, flashes back to her eyes, and all along there’s a pressure of unsaid words weighing them down until Lorraine lies on top of her, chest to chest, their breathing evening out and synchronizing. 

She wants to tell her about her parents, about the truck driver falling asleep and changing lanes, about her stubborn pride and dogged determination to put herself through law school and about her burnout at twenty-five that left her like a black hole, empty and cold in the dead of space, ravenous for a momentary sense of ecstasy.

But she can’t unless Lorraine asks and she doesn’t.

“Do you have a death wish?” That’s what Lorraine goes for instead and Delphine’s thoughts come to a halt.

“Don't we all?” she says and lifts her head enough to place a peck on Lorraine’s chin, right below her lips.

“I don’t,” Lorraine says and the “anymore” is left unsaid too but Delphine can hear its echo in their shared breath.

“Careful, _Loren_ ,” she says, her tongue rolling lightly and stumbling on the letter “r” like it always does. She revels in that name, she can’t help herself, she wants to repeat it until she wears it down completely, until it becomes second nature, until none is left of _Lorraine Broughton_. “It’s a bit of a job requirement. They might retire you early if you’re not committed enough.”

“Maybe they should,” Lorraine says. “Then I wouldn’t have to smuggle myself into France every time I want to see you.”

It is the closest thing to a confession and way more than Delphine has ever expected and it lands in her chest like a punch. With that, her doubt disperses. It scatters in her lungs and evaporates.

“When I’m with you,” Delphine says and her voice sounds tiny in her inner ears but Lorraine must hear her anyway because she tenses against her, “staying alive seems like the most exhilarating thing I could do.”

Lorraine’s face clouds as she moves to sit up and for a suffocating moment Delphine thinks she has misstepped. Before she could backpedal and say something calculatedly naive and inane, the moment passes and Lorraine reaches down to unzip Delphine’s fly. She hooks her fingers in her belt loops, tugging gently, more a request for permission than a real effort to free her legs and Delphine gives it when she lifts her hips.

“A novel sensation?” Lorraine asks as she pulls her jeans off.

“A nostalgic one,” Delphine whispers and when a bout of sea breeze chills her thighs she presses them together.

“I can’t say the same,” Lorraine says and unhooks her bra, the cups hang slack below her breasts, her skin mirrors the sheen of the nacre buttons of her shirt abandoned on the floor, but Delphine can’t appreciate her the way she should be appreciated, with her eyes and her hands and her lips and her tongue, because her mind is latched onto the unsaid, the rest of that sentence lagging behind so cruelly.

Lorraine looks at her like she’s acutely aware of the effect she has on Delphine _,_ and says, “You make me _irrational_ ”–the bra joins the shirt–“Hardly nostalgic.”

Delphine watches as Lorraine slides off the bed to take her slacks off too. An hour ago she would’ve read her slow deliberation as teasing, as a display of total control over her body and her desires but now she thinks, no – she _hopes_ that Lorraine is tense like a violin string overextended by anticipation, ready to snap. Their eyes lock in silent understanding and then they both rid themselves of their underwear.

The string snaps and Lorraine arrives.

Her hand drifts past Delphine’s sternum to hover above her ribcage. As Delphine inhales, deep and shaky, she makes contact, skin to skin and Lorraine’s palm is a branding iron or the end of a cigarette or a fuse freshly lit and she almost expects it to glow red-hot too. 

There’s been a build-up of emotions, layers upon layers like a picture painted over with new oil and new pigments, richer and heavier with each stroke but always staying true to itself. Underneath it all, that truth lay sealed away, waiting to be excavated, for eight months and a couple of days.

She is in love with Loren Bernard.

She is in love with her hands – the veins lacing through them signalling her age, her fingers – long and thin – and the way they spread across her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. How they curl into her hips, hook under the back of her knees and pull her closer like she weighs nothing.

She is in love with her touch too, it leaves her chilled, shivering, with sweat pearling on her temples and in the hollow of her neck as Lorraine kisses along the inside of her thigh, and Delphine can’t see it but she knows she is grinning and it makes her feel like she is Venus on Earth. Revered.

Her mouth and her tongue and her teeth – she loves them all. When they move to kiss her lips, all her lips, practised and methodical even in their abandon, she loves them more.

She could fall apart just from this but she wants the total obliteration. 

“Your hand,” she sighs out, “I want your hand too.”

And Lorraine complies and arrives again and Delphine thinks the pressure from her taut, trembling legs might snap her neck. She drags her nails along her forearm and sinks them in, hard enough to distract herself and fall off the height she was speeding towards.

She loosens around Lorraine – she is liquid copper again.

“Too fast?” Lorraine murmurs against her and her voice is tinted with humour.

“Yes,” Delphine says. “It’s been ages.”

 _I haven’t had anyone else_ , she wants to say.

 _I’ve only had myself and I don’t compare_ , she wants to say.

 _This might be the last time_ , she wants to say.

“I’d like to cherish this,” she says instead and tries to force some lightness into her voice. “Before you disappear into the night.”

“You could just ask me to stay,” Lorraine says and adds another finger and Delphine can’t rein in the moan that tears through her.

“Would you?”–the muscles of her stomach stiffen–“If I asked you?”

Lorraine doesn’t answer but she looks up into her eyes, idles in her gaze, then she shifts her hand the right way until it is _perfect_ , too perfect and too fast, and in her delirium, Delphine takes that as a promise.


End file.
